The circulation of blood in the body is controlled by the pumping action of the heart. The heart expands and contracts by the force of the heart muscle under impulses from the heart rhythm regulation system. The heart rhythm regulation system transfers an electrical signal for activating the heart muscle cells.
The normal conduction of electrical impulses through the heart starts in the sinoatrial node, travels across the right atrium, the atrioventricular node, the bundles of His and thereafter spread across the ventricular muscle mass. Eventually when the signal reaches the myocytes specialized in only contraction, the muscle cell will contract and create the pumping function of the heart (see FIG. 1).
The electrical impulses are transferred by specially adapted cells. Such a cell will create and discharge a potential over the cell membrane by pumping ions in and out of the cell. Adjacent cells are joined end-to-end by intercalated disks. These disks are cell membranes with a very low electrical impedance. An activation of a potential in a cell will propagate to adjacent cells thanks to the low impedance of the intercalated disks between the cells. While being at the embryonic stage, all heart muscle cells, the myocytes, have the ability to create and transfer electrical signals. During evolution the myocytes specialize and only those cells necessary for maintaining a stable heart-rate are keeping the ability to create and send electrical impulses. For a more thorough explanation of the propagation of electrical signals in the heart, see e.g. Sandöe, E. and Sigurd, B., Arrhythmia, Diagnosis and Management, A Clinical Electrocardiographic Guide, Fachmed A G, 1984.
The heart function will be impaired if there is a disturbance on the normal conduction of the electrical impulses. Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a condition of electrical disorder in the heart rhythm regulation system. In this condition, premature and fast signals irregularly initiating muscle contractions in the atria as well as in the ventricles will be started in ectopic sites, that is areas outside the sinoatrial node. These signals will be transmitted erratically all over the heart. When more than one such ectopic site starts to transmit, the situation becomes totally chaotic, in contrast to the perfect regularity in a healthy heart, where the rhythm is controlled from the sinoatrial node.
Atrial fibrillation is a very common disorder, thus 5% of all patients that undergo heart surgery suffer from AF. 0.4-2% of a population will suffer from AF, whereas 10% of the population over the age of 65 suffers from AF. 160 000 new cases occur every year in the US and the number of cases at present in the US is estimated to be around 3 million persons. Thus, treatment of atrial fibrillation is an important topic.
Typical sites for ectopic premature signals in AF may be anywhere in the atria, in the pulmonary veins (PV), in the coronary sinus (CS), in the superior vena cava (SVC) or in the inferior vena cava (JVC). There are myocardial muscle sleeves present around the orifices and inside the SVC, IVC, CS and the PVs. Especially around the orifice of the left superior pulmonary vein (LSPV) such ectopic sites are frequent, as well as at the orifice of the right superior pulmonary vein (RSPV). In AF multiple small circles of a transmitted electrical signal started in an ectopic site may develop, creating re-entry of the signal in circles and the circle areas will sustain themselves for long time. There may be only one ectopic site sending out signals leading to atrial flutter, or there may be multiple sites of excitation resulting in atrial fibrillation. The conditions may be chronic or continuous since they never stop. In other cases there may be periods of normal regular sinus rhythm between arrhythmias. The condition will then be described as intermittent.
In the chronic or continuous cases, the atrial musculature undergoes an electrical remodelling so that the re-entrant circuits sustain themselves continuously. The patient will feel discomfort by the irregular heart rate, sometimes in form of cannon waves of blood being pushed backwards in the venous system, when the atria contract against a closed arterio-ventricle valve. The irregular action of the atria creates standstill of blood in certain areas of the heart, predominantly in the auricles of the left and right atrium. Here, blood clots may develop. Such blood clots may in the left side of the heart get loose and be taken by the blood stream to the brain, where it creates disastrous damage in form of cerebral stroke. AF is considered to be a major cause of stroke, which is one of the biggest medical problems today.
Today, there are a few methods of treating the problems of disorders to the heart rhythm regulation system. Numerous drugs have been developed to treat AF, but the use of drugs is not effective to a large part of the patients. Thus, there has also been developed a number of surgical therapies.
Surgical therapy was introduced by Drs. Cox, Boineau and others in the late 1980s. The principle for surgical treatment is to cut all the way through the atrial wall by means of knife and scissors and create a total separation of the tissue. Subsequently the tissues are sewn together again to heal by fibrous tissue, which does not have the ability to transmit myocardial electrical signals. A pattern of cutting was created to prohibit the propagation of impulses and thereby isolate the ectopic sites, and thus maintain the heart in sinus rhythm. The rationale for this treatment is understandable from the description above, explaining that there must be a physical contact from myocyte to myocyte for a transfer of information between them. By making a complete division of tissue, a replacement by non-conductive tissue will prohibit further ectopic sites to take over the stimulation. The ectopic sites will thus be isolated and the impulses started in the ectopic sites will therefore not propagate to other parts of the heart.
It is necessary to literally cut the atria and the SVC and the IVC in strips. When the strips are sewn together they will give the impression of a labyrinth guiding the impulse from the sinoatrial node to the atrioventricular node, and the operation was consequently given the name Maze. The cutting pattern is illustrated in FIG. 2 and was originally presented in J L Cox, T E Canavan, R B Schuessler, M E Cain, B D Lindsay, C Stone, P K Smith, P B Corr, and J P Boineau, The surgical treatment of atrial fibrillation. II. Intraoperative electrophysiologic mapping and description of the electrophysiologic basis of atrial flutter and atrial fibrillation, J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg, 1991 101: 406-426. The operation has a long-time success of curing patients from AF in 90% of the patients. However, the Maze operation implicate that many suture lines have to be made and requires that the cuts are completely sealed, which is a demanding task for every surgeon that tries the method. The operation is time consuming, especially the time when the patients own circulation has to be stopped and replaced by extracorporeal circulation by means of a heart-lung machine. Thus mortality has been high and the really good results remained in the hands of a few very trained and gifted surgeons.
The original Maze operation has therefore been simplified by eliminating the number of incisions to a minimum, still resulting in a good result in most cases. The currently most commonly used pattern of incisions is called Maze III (see FIG. 3).
Other methods of isolating the ectopic sites have also been developed recently. In these methods, the actual cutting and sewing of tissue has been replaced by methods for killing myocyte cells. Thus, one may avoid separating the tissue, instead one destroy the tissue by means of heat or cooling in the Maze pattern to create a lesion through the heart wall. The damaged myocyte tissue can not transfer signals any more and therefore the same result may be achieved. Still the chest has to be opened, and the heart stopped and opened. Further, the energy source has to be carefully controlled to affect only tissue that is to be destroyed.
A large number of devices have now been developed using various energy sources for destroying the myocyte tissue. Such devices may use high radio frequency energy, as disclosed in e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 5,938,660, or microwaves, ultrasound or laser energy. Recently, devices have been developed for catheter-based delivery of high radio frequency energy through the venous and or arterial systems. However, this has so far had limited success due to difficulties in navigation and application of energy and also late PV stenosis has been reported. Further, devices using cooling of tissue has used expanding argon gas or helium gas to create temperatures of −160° C. Using an instrument with a tip, tissue can be frozen and destroyed.